Blossom After The Disgrace
by Dougster
Summary: The villains of Townsville have a new name for Blossom: Jailbird...
1. One

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Blossom After The Disgrace

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Note: This is a sequel to the PPG episode "A Very Special Blossom," in which Blossom succumbs to the temptation to steal a rare $2000 set of golf clubs to give to the Professor for Father's Day, then follows that up by trying to pin the blame on Mojo, and finally has to be chased and caught by her sisters before she confesses. At the end of the episode she is sentenced to community service and regarded with disgust by her sisters. Even the narrator says, "And so the day is saved, thanks to the Powerpuff Girls! -- well, two of them at least." Then prison bars slam down in front of a penitent-looking Blossom. So ends the episode. 

For me it left a few unanswered questions. Just how does leader Blossom deal with this unprecedented fall from grace? How does she redeem herself and move on? Can things ever be the same again? 

And wouldn't the bad guys try to capitalize on her failing?

~~~~

Blossom removed her orange hard hat, stepped out of the orange prison coveralls she had worn over her dress, and hung them on two hooks in the wall at the police office. Checking out with the uniformed man at the desk, she glanced back at them. She'd become well acquainted with these items over the two hundred hours of her community service. The coveralls were frayed at the cuffs and had smudges at the chest and on both knees, and the hat was battered enough to have seen years of use. Someone had marked the initials RLM on the inside of the hat, and she wondered who that was -- some crook we caught, maybe, back in the old days before The Disgrace? 

The old days -- she recalled them now as one remembers a fond dream. When every citizen from the Mayor to Talking Dog held her in high esteem, and no one would ever have conceived of her violating their trust. When she had been the Savior Of The City along with her sisters, delivering it from every threat imaginable, and faces lit up when she flew overhead. People cheered, the papers proclaimed "Powerpuffs Save The Day!" and everyone equated the name "Blossom" with everything good, noble and virtuous. 

It seemed amazing now. Was there ever really such a time?

The bored-looking officer behind the desk clicked his fingers over a computer keyboard. A sheet of paper buzzed from a dot-matrix printer; he tore it off and thumped a stamp on the bottom. "Congratulations, that's the last of your community service. You're free to go."

_He didn't even look at me,_ Blossom thought. _I'm just another orange coverall to him._

Or maybe he didn't want her to see his disgust...

She mumbled "Thanks" and shuffled out the door, looking at the ground. She had done a lot of looking down since The Disgrace, and in this way learned just how often people leave dimes, quarters, and even paper money on the sidewalk. Once she'd come across a twenty dollar bill but hurried past it, not daring to touch it; one theft was enough. 

Quietly she lifted herself off the ground. After her first day of community service, she had walked all the way home, even though the Professor had dropped her off and offered to pick her up. She did not want to use the dazzling abilities for which she was known; she felt like she no longer had the right to use them. But after seeing the looks from people as she slunk by, she went back to flying, and much higher than usual. 

Without a sound she alighted on her front porch and opened the door. 

"SURPRISE!"

Blossom flinched as if slapped in the face. 

The Professor stood beaming by the stairs, and her sisters were dancing around a fine three-layer cake that crowned the coffee table; pink icing dotted with little red candy hearts, and WE LOVE YOU BLOSSOM! squiggled in white icing across the top. 

A blue flash, a green flash, and her sisters were hugging her, smiling mightily, crushing her between them as if trying to squeeze a grin out of her too.

"Welcome home, honey!" The Professor spoke too loudly and too jovially. "We wanted to celebrate the completion of your community service. You're a free girl!"

"Look! I drew you a picture!" Bubbles whipped a crayon drawing out of nowhere and held it up: a carefully-scrawled pink rendering of Blossom, with black sticks for arms and legs, and a face like a delirious rag doll. 

"Uh...thanks, Bubbles." 

"And look at this!" Buttercup waved a pair of red and blue toy race cars. "Vroooom! You'll get tons of fun out of these!" Then she leaned closer and whispered, "Aren't these a lot better than some dumb old picture?"

"Hey!" Bubbles snapped.

"Now, girls." The Professor laughed. "This is a happy day, a day to celebrate our dear Blossom -- "

He stopped. Dear Blossom had whisked up the stairs, leaving everyone staring after her. 


	2. Two

There was a tap on the girls' bedroom door. "Blossom?" The Professor. "Honey?"

She lay curled up on the bed, trembling. The door creaked open. She felt the bed sink under the Professor's weight as he sat down, and his arms pulling her gently to him.

Blossom swallowed. When she spoke her voice was hoarse. "Professor, I'm so--"

"Sorry. Yes, I know." She had said it countless times.

The girl was fighting hard to keep from crying; she had cried herself to sleep almost every night since The Disgrace. "I'm grateful for what you're all trying to do...it's just that...when Bubbles showed me her drawing..."

"Yes?"

"I only saw myself in prison clothes!" She broke into sobs. "Oh, Professor! The looks people gave me! When I was picking up trash, they'd shake their heads at me, and one little boy stuck out his tongue and his mother laughed, and -- "

"Now honey, no one has any right to point fingers at you. Besides, it was really my fault. If I hadn't put so much value in material possessions, this never would have happened."

_But it didn't drive Bubbles or Buttercup to steal,_ she thought.

The Professor said, "You made a mistake -- "

"And everyone makes mistakes, I know." He had reminded her of this almost as many times as she had apologized. "But they're just everyday people, not Powerpuffs. They're not expected to be heroes or examples of everything good, and I let you down and I let my sisters down and I let the whole town down and how can anything ever be the same again?"

Silence. Blossom listened absently to the beat of the Professor's heart, thinking: He must be wondering this himself. 


	3. Three

The next day at Pokey Oaks Kindergarten, Miss Keane was reading _Lord Jim_ to the class when the hotline buzzed. 

Bubbles and Buttercup looked at their sister, who did not move from her desk but stared at her feet, fidgeting nervously. A hush seemed to fall over the class. The phone sounded again, deafening in the silence. 

Buttercup stood up. "I'll get it -- "

"No." Blossom flashed to the hotline and picked it up. She cleared her throat. "Blossom here." A pause. "Yes, Mayor?..." She stiffened. "Why do you want to speak to Bubbles or Buttercup? What's wrong with me?" 

"Blossom," Miss Keane whispered. "You're raising your voice."

The girl blushed. "Sorry. Mr. Mayor? Would you please just tell me what's going on?" She listened. "All right, we're on it."

She banged down the phone and turned to her sisters.

"Girls, there's some kind of disturbance in the park."

Everyone quickly made the connection: park equaled volcano equaled observatory equaled...

"All right!" Buttercup shattered the silence. Her voice was like the Professor's voice yesterday, too loud and too cheerful. She swiped the air with her ever-ready fists. "Let's go get'em!" And Bubbles filled the air with giggles. 

"Cut it out, girls, this could be serious. Be ready for anything. Let's roll!" And Blossom was off in a flash. 

Soaring over the city, her sisters in formation behind her, Blossom smiled. The old rush was returning. Her heart started to lift. Yes! Once she busted a real criminal, everything would be okay. Then she remembered how she tried blame her crime on Mojo, and...she bit her lip and sped faster. 

The park trees flew by below, and then, looming ahead, its dome glinting in the sunlight -- The observatory.

"Buttercup, scan the hideout."

She did so. "I'm picking up three life forms inside. They're jumping all over the place, raising some kind of commotion."

"Let's go listen in."

They flashed to the observatory dome, pressing their ears against it. 

Blossom's eyes opened wide.

She heard a sound like chomping and the smacking of lips, an occasional giggle or laugh; and thundering above it all was a voice she had come to know very well, like a mad genius making a presidential campaign speech. 

"This marks a banner moment in the annals of evil, the chronicles of crime, the whole hallowed history of heinousness! When the so-called 'do-gooders' let slip their guard and reveal their hypocrisy for all to see! The enjoyment I derive from it! The pleasure that tingles me from my toes to the top of my superior brain! Mu-ha-ha-ha-ha!" Then a gurgling and slurping, and someone tittering in the background.

Another voice joined in. "Yes indeed!" A sing-song voice, and almost sickeningly effeminate. "And to think, Mojo, that you saw it all up close, with your own eyes!"

"I most certainly did! Mojo was just minding his own business," the voice fell to a mock-solemn tone, "paying his Father's Day respects, when that poor desperate wench intruded into my home and dragged me to the police station in a pathetic attempt to frame me for _her_ crime!" Whoops of laughter.

Then came a girl's voice, whiny enough to make the Powerpuffs wince. "And to think she's the very same one who told me -- " a high, mimicking tone -- "'You've done nothing worthy of the name Powerpuff!' Well look who's talking!" And she let loose a torrent of giggles. 

Princess -- for that was the giggler's name -- continued: "She doesn't know it, but I had the chauffeur drive me every day to wherever she was picking up garbage, and I watched her through a telescope. Sheesh, the look on her face!" A round of laughter arose; she must have done a comical imitation of that expression. 

Buttercup exploded. "That's it! Nobody talks that way about our sister!" She crashed through the dome with a BOOM, leaving a jagged hole. Bubbles raced in after her. 

As for Blossom, she was trembling, and her face had flushed red. But she took a deep breath and followed her sisters inside.


	4. Four

She saw what she knew she would see: curly-haired Princess, with a freckled face and eyes as black and suspicious as a weasel's; Him, that crimson being who went by another name in religious writings; and the host of this gathering, resplendent in blue and white, crowned with a shiny cap over his bloated, superpowered brain -- Mojo Jojo. They all looked up; they all smiled.

The girls froze in midair.

"Oh no!" Bubbles' hands flew to her mouth. 

"Woah!" Buttercup stared. The two girls rushed to cover Blossom's eyes, but too late -- she had seen it. 

Splashed all over the observatory walls, in giant posters, and smaller pictures in rows and columns, were pictures of the illustrious leader of the Powerpuff Girls, not soaring above the city that she and her sisters protected, not cuffing a villain or dispatching some towering beast without even ruffling her pretty red bow -- no. This was the Blossom in prison coveralls, Blossom enduring taunts from passersby, the downcast, disgraced, convicted criminal Blossom!

"My chauffeur's a good photographer, don't you think?" Princess snatched a handful of cookies from a buffet table and stuffed them in her mouth. The table stretched across the observatory, loaded with bananas, pineapples, and every kind of sweet dessert, as well as tall pitchers brimming with purple punch and cherry Kool-Aid. Mojo, not bothering with goblets, hefted a punch pitcher to his mouth, splattering some of it on the floor. Princess kept talking as she chewed: "We woo won'rin when woo'd fow up!" She added something else that was unintelligible except for the word "jailbird." Blossom cringed.

Mojo threw aside the empty pitcher and stabbed a gloved finger at her. "Yes! Did you think I would forget such an effrontery? And now you go back to leading your girlish gang as if nothing ever happened? It stuns my superior brain that anyone would let you lead them now -- a felon with a criminal record, and her picture in the Townsville Police scrapbook!"

He turned his green simian glare on Bubbles and Buttercup. "What is the matter with you? Has the realization not hit you yet? No one can ever see you the same way again if you continue to associate with this pilferer of putters and stealer of sports equipment! They'll think you are as bad as she is!"

Bubbles shrieked, "She's our sister!" in a voice so high it almost shattered the goblet Princess was sipping Kool-Aid from. 

"Wrong!" Mojo roared. "You were not born from the same womb! She happened to be created in the same laboratory accident that created you, nothing more -- "

Buttercup was nose-to-nose with Mojo in an instant. "Say that again, Mo-jerk, and I'll put you in intensive care! Blossom's our sister! She made a mistake, but she paid for it and it's over, so knock it off!"

Blossom was covering her face. Bubbles put an arm around her shoulder. "It's all right, don't listen to him, he's just mean, it's all right..."

Blossom gave a long, low wail; then she burst into tears and shot out of the observatory. 

Silence. 

For a moment Bubbles looked out the jagged hole in the ceiling where her sister had made her exit. Then she slowly turned around and fixed Mojo with a look even more withering than Buttercup's. 

"Mojo." She spoke in a low voice. "Remember when I beat you up all by myself?"

"But this time," Buttercup growled, "she's gonna have plenty of help."

The monkey gave them a silly smile. "Oh, Powerpuff girls," he said in his mock-solemn tone. "You sound just like a couple of criminals. Or at least friends of one."

Then a crimson flash ignited, like a red sun lighting off in the observatory. A cackle of devilish laughter, and two girls screaming. 


	5. Five

When the red light faded, Bubbles lay flattened against the opposite wall with Buttercup beside her -- the blast, or whatever it was, had blown them clear across the room and singed their dresses black, with only traces of the original colors remaining. The three villains howled, whooped, and tittered with laughter. 

"My, my!" Him's sickly-sweet voice rang out. "It worked even better than I hoped! Well done, Mojo!" He clapped his red lobster-claws together, and Princess and the chimp clinked punch and Kool-Aid glasses. 

Bubbles and Buttercup tried to regain their voices: "Wha...wha..."

Him continued his speech. "But we all deserve credit. I'm sure you girls are well aware, I'm not exactly from around here. I'm from a certain _very_ hot place," he giggled, "and so I thought, what if we could bottle some of that hyper-heat and bring it here? Princess' Daddy Morebucks thought it was a splendid idea -- so much that he financed the whole project," (Princess beamed at this, and stuck her tongue out at the two charred Powerpuffs), "and Mojo built it!"

"It was a labor of love," the ape added.

Bubbles and Buttercup shot forth as if from a double-barreled cannon. "Bubbles!" Buttercup hissed. "We gotta take that thing out! Mojo's never made a gadget we couldn't smash up!" And indeed, at that moment, her huge eyes lit up at past memories of this. 

Bubbles glanced around. "But which gadget?" The observatory was, of course, always full of them; riveted metal robots, lasers like big spikes tipped with glass, computers and power packs. 

"We'll show you!" Princess squealed with glee. 

The room glowed red again. Bubbles' shadow appeared before her on the opposite wall, and a great heat stung her back. It was as if a furnace had opened behind her. She yelped, and she and Buttercup shot in opposite directions. Then she looked over her shoulder. 

What she saw looked indeed like a spherical furnace, hovering in midair, glowing red-hot and big enough to swallow a good-sized car; and out of its mouth crackled a hundred flares, leaping and erupting like lightning flashes, snapshotting the room in flashes of yellow. Bubbles felt its heat and thought better of touching it. 

Him said, "You see, girls, we remembered your capacity for vandalism and took it into account!"

One of the flares lashed at Buttercup, throwing off sparks, and might have scorched her to cinders had she not bolted out of the way. 

Bubbles gave the furnace an eye-blast; no result. The beams simply vanished into its fiery interior.

"Hee-hee-hee! You're just helping it, if anything!" Princess raised her fists.

Buttercup leaped to the opening, drew back a fist.

"Yes! Go ahead! Strike it!" Mojo was actually jumping with excitement. "And see what happens to your pwecious wittle fist!"

Buttercup didn't try it. 

A flare shot out at Bubbles, and as fast as she was, it nearly caught her. Then it whipped out again at Buttercup. Shot after shot fired, pockmarking the observatory walls with charred spots, as the girls zigzagged to avoid them. 

Bubbles yelled, "We can't dodge them forever!" 

"But what can we do?" Buttercup ducked another volley. By now the villains were all going crazy, leaping, cheering, jeering.

Finally the Powerpuffs streaked out the jagged hole in the ceiling, the villains throwing taunts after them. 

"Buttercup?"

"Yeah?"

"Did you hear them say something about -- "

"Taking their party out on the town?"

"Yes." Bubbles' heart sank. "That was it."


	6. Six

Blossom was on the couch, crying on the Professor's shoulder. "I've ruined everything, I've ruined everything."

"Now, honey." He patted her back. "We've been all through this before. It's all in the past now, and don't let anyone try to tell you differently. Especially villains."

But the voice of Mojo echoed in Blossom's memory: _It stuns my superior brain that anyone would let you lead them now...a felon with a criminal record...picture in the Townsville Police scrapbook_...

The front door opened and closed. Blossom felt the Professor tighten. "Girls!" he cried. "What happened to you?"

Bubbles and Buttercup, in charred dresses and smudged faces, sounded off: "Professor Blossom this is really bad we gotta do something they've got this red-hot weapon all this fire and we can't get to it and -- "

"Girls, girls, calm down! Bubbles, start from the beginning." She recounted the whole story. 

"Oh, no." The Professor's face paled slightly. Blossom just hung her head. 

The hotline buzzed. The Professor got up and answered it.

"Yes, Mayor?...I see...all right...I'll tell the girls." He hung up the phone.

"They just stormed past the Mayor's house. Mojo's in his Robo-Jojo, and Princess and Him are dancing in the street. The Mayor's voice was shaking. He mentioned flashes of red flame that set at least two houses on fire. He heard Princess yell "We're just getting warmed up!" and Him say something about painting the town red. He said he's never seen them more brazen."

Bubbles and Buttercup looked at their silent sister.

"Two words -- " Buttercup began.

" -- Ice breath!" Bubbles finished. 

Blossom sniffled. Sure, she thought. I'll go and destroy this weapon, if I can, but then Mojo and the rest will go right on taunting me, howling and waving those pictures of me, and then they'll just invent some other doomsday machine. What's the use? 

Yet she couldn't just do nothing...

_Jailbird!_ Princess' smirk, Mojo's laughter, Him's incessant effeminate gloat stung her mind, and her mouth tightened. _Jailbird, jailbird!_

The Professor's voice floated over to her. "Blossom...?"

She wiped her face. She jerked up her head. 

"Bubbles! Buttercup! Let's go!" 

"All right!" The two sisters high-fived each other.

The Powerpuffs blew out of the house, leaving a tri-colored rainbow shimmering after them. 


	7. Seven

The three villains careened up Main Street. Mojo crouched in the domed cockpit of his thirty-foot stomping machine, shaking the earth and rattling all the shop windows with each mighty step. Princess zoomed to and fro in her flight pack with its twin jets, and the evil Him led the parade, high-stepping in his black boots, waving and twirling his fluffy pink stole. And above Him, below Princess, and in front of Mojo's great machine, the furnace raged, shooting jets of crimson flame every few seconds; some arced into the sky, others sliced across the street leaving smoking trails, and still others set unfortunate buildings on fire. One such house, now three blocks behind them, exploded with a boom and a shower of flaming debris. 

Unfortunately Mojo had guzzled a little too much punch, and the Robo-Jojo teetered and staggered from side to side, occasionally smashing into a building and scattering bricks and bits of glass in the street. 

"Care-ful!" Princess shouted. "Can't you see where you're going?"

Mojo, lidded-eyed and content at the controls, muttered, "You dint tell me ya daddy shpiked th'punch!" and hiccupped.

She rolled her eyes and folded her arms, hovering in front of the Robo's windshield. "Well, sheesh, you tasted it, didn't you? _I_ only drank Kool-Aid." Said as if this was indisputable proof of her eternal sainthood.

Him, whose shark-toothed smile had never left his face all night, pointed skyward. "My, my! Look who's coming to join us!"

Princess looked. Mojo, as soon as the words registered in his fogged oversized brain, looked.

A blue streak, arcing over the city. Beside it, a green streak.

A pink streak.

"So she had the nerve to come back." Princess contemplated her fingernails, finely manicured for her that morning by the butler as she watched a Jerry Springer rerun on the giant wall-sized TV screen in her room. Mojo was ranting something over the robo's P.A. system in a slurred voice; neither she nor Him really heard it. 

Three colorful flashes, and the new arrivals stood in the street -- Bubbles, Buttercup, and leader Blossom, her arms folded, barring the villains' way.

"Not -- so -- fast," Blossom said. 

Princess smirked. "Well! Looks like Miss High and Mighty still doesn't get it!" She did a loop-the-loop in the air. "Well, hero? Come to ice over the party?"

Him added, "Would that change anything you did?" He went up to Blossom and draped a claw-tipped arm around her shoulder. "Face facts, dear. For it is a fact, and it always will be. Nothing can ever undo it. Isn't that right?" Then, switching from his effeminate voice to a low snarl: _"Isn't it?"_

The girl started to tremble again. Then all at once she kicked him away, sending him tumbling, sucked in a breath, and blew with all her might. 

Nothing happened. 

Blossom drew another breath, tried it again. Nothing but lukewarm air drifted from her mouth. She tried again, and again...

Nothing.

The three villains erupted into fresh laughter, Mojo's loudest of all, ringing over his loudspeakers.

Him got up and dusted himself off. "What's the matter, dear?" he crooned. "Did your breath thaw in the heat of _your shame?"_ He snarled these last two words out in his sinister devil-voice. Then he returned to his effeminate cant. "You see...I know something about you that you never realized. Such curious things, your powers. No one can understand how they work, or what unforeseen thing might undo them. Especially ice breath. Well, guilt undoes it. Feelings of shame choke it out and render it inoperative. It won't work for a Powerpuff Girl burdened by remorse!"

The furnace shot a volley of flares, arcing and whizzing in all directions, hitting buildings in splashes of fireworks, setting them ablaze. Smoke billowed; sirens howled in the distance. People ran screaming along the street.

Buttercup sprang forward. "C'mon, girls! We can still kick their butts!" 

She flew feet-first at Him. No good; the flares were too many and too fast. One struck Buttercup and slammed her into the street in a shower of sparks, leaving a smoking crater. She crawled out of it, groaning, wisps of vapor curling up from the edges of her hair, as the network of flares played above her.

Bubbles, clenching her teeth, spread her arms wide and slammed her hands together in a sonic thunderclap. The sound waves pulsed forward and rippled the flares a little; but that was all. 

Mojo's voice rang from the Robo-Jojo's loudspeakers. "Mu-ha-ha-ha! I am enjoying this almost as much as the little wench's pictures!"

Buttercup whizzed back to her sisters. The three stood in a row, mouths tight.

"Power up, girls!" Blossom said; but she was starting to tremble. 

Three pairs of lasers blazed forth. They got nowhere. Whether the girls aimed for the devil-man, the airborne brat, or the towering Robo-Jojo, flares intercepted the beams and snuffed them out.

"Hee-hee-hee!" Princess hovered over the furnace, smugly secure. "Could your crime-fighting days be over, Blossom? Maybe you should go back to picking up trash...hey!" She jetted down to the sidewalk, landing in a blast of smoke. "Well, well! Will you look at this!" She ran to a store window.

Blossom looked. She cringed. For a moment her heart died, for it was the very place she had robbed on Father's Day. And the golf clubs themselves, the Pro Excellence 2000's that the Professor had nearly had a heart attack over, still dominated the display window. 

"Ah-haaahh!" Him sprang to the window, a crimson blur. There was a smash and a tinkling of glass, and he held the golf bag aloft in his two lobster-claws. "Behold, the instrument of evil's victory! I ought to take it home as a trophy!"

"Oh, let me have them!" Princess reached for them, but Him played keep-away. "My daddy would lo-o-o-ove these!"

Blossom watched the scene. Her sisters, hanging tense in the air, looked back and forth between her and the villains.

Him said, "Why dear, your father's own golf clubs must make these look dime-cheap."

"That's not the poiiinnt!" Princess whined, stamping her feet. "I want them, _I want them!"_

"No!" Mojo's distorted voice blared from the P.A.; he must have cranked it up to eleven. "If anyone steals those, it will be me! But as I do not care for the game of golf, it will give me the greatest of pleasure to flatten them into sheet metal!" And he raised one of the robo's giant feet in anticipation of this.

Suddenly Blossom yelled, "Hey!"

There was a great silence, except for the steady rumbling of the great maw flaming in the air. 

Princess looked lazily over her shoulder. "Whaddya want, jailbird?"

Blossom pointed. "Those clubs. It almost killed me just to see them. I wouldn't in a million years even _think_ of stealing again. But you're -- "

"Thrilled to do it?" Him warbled. "Of course we are, dear. That's the difference between you and ourselves. We're _honest_ about being evil. We don't pretend to be something we're not." Mojo grunted an assent over his speakers.

"But you don't have to be evil! No one's forcing you to commit crimes!"

Princess rolled her eyes as if to say, "Look who's talking."

Bubbles held up a finger and smiled. "'Nobody's perfect,'" she recited as if she had been waiting all day for her chance to impart this bit of wisdom. 

Blossom added, "And maybe there's a difference between people who foul up but learn from it and move on, and people who just keep doing wrong and making excuses for it, and never caring about the people they hurt."

Buttercup boomed, "And which one of those is our sister, Princess, and which one is you? Or Him? Or Mojo?"

The sirens howled. No one spoke.

"Well?" said Blossom.

Him opened his mouth, but Bubbles cut him off.

"Go, Blossom! Try it again!"

A crimson flare rumbled out from the portal and swept across the girls' path. They scattered as sparks flew and flames roared. Blossom heard Him shrieking below, "Burn them burn them!"

Whirling to face the furnace, she sucked in her breath, took aim, and spewed forth an arctic blast!

In seconds the fiery maw was covered with a white sheet of ice. The flares flickered and died, leaving the villains with shocked faces, as if their clothes had fallen off.

"Bubbles!" shouted Blossom. "Buttercup!"

"We're on it!" The two sisters zoomed around, cutting blue and green arcs in the smoke-choked sky. 

Princess shrieked and throttled her jets. Too late -- a blue streak sliced through the jet pack, reducing it to sputtering rubble. Princess smacked face-first to the street and scrambled for home, her nose bloodied, crying for her daddy. 

"And _stay_ away, spoiled brat!" Bubbles shouted after her, raspberrying for good measure. 

Mojo, up in his cockpit, blinked at the green shooting star streaking towards him. Finally his tipsy mind comprehended what was happening, and he gave a yelp and yanked levers, turning the machine around with a chugging of its engine. 

"Not so fast, Mo-joke!"

Buttercup smashed through one side of the canopy and out the other, grabbing the monkey by the collar and towing him after her. Glass fell tinkling to the street. The great machine teetered, staggered and collapsed with a crash that shook the entire block. A _pow,_ a _bam,_ and the simian made for his volcano-top observatory as fast as his ape-feet could take him, black-eyed and with his striped brain-cap split down the middle, blubbering all the way. 

Blossom stood and faced the devil-man. Her sisters swooped down and alighted on either side of her. 

A grin slowly spread across the devil's face. He raised his claws, holding two big black-and-white photographs -- Blossom's mug shots.

"Look, dear. Look. From Powerpuff Girl to common thief. Who ever would have thought of it -- "

Blossom's eyes flared red. Two laser shots, and the pictures dissolved into ashes, fluttering to the street. 

Him drew in his claws. "Ummm..."

Bubbles and Buttercup sprang at the villain and whirled around him, blue and green electrons around a writhing crimson nucleus, batting and socking, and finally grabbing his arms and carrying him to the iced-over furnace. 

"Ahhh!" Him struggled. "No, no!"

Bubbles grinned. "Ready? One -- two -- "

Buttercup yelled, "Three!"

They threw him right at the opening. He smashed through the ice and into the roaring flames. His scream floated back out to them until the rumble of the furnace drowned it out.

"Now, Blossom!" The two darted away from the furnace.

Pulling the deepest breath she can manage, Blossom blew a long, sustained blizzard. The flames smothered in a storm of white; ice caked over the infernal weapon and built up until it wobbled, plunged to the street and shattered in an explosion of snow and ice. 

And the girls, they laughed, they giggled, they joined hands and swooped in circles through the gently falling snow that covered the damaged buildings in white, cleansed the air, and blanketed the street until all trace of the devastation was invisible and forgotten. 


	8. Wrapup

The girls arrived home to find a crowd gathered in their front yard: the Professor, the Mayor, Miss Bellum(who always stood close by as if ready to correct her boss' every blunder), Miss Keane, and a great many others. Even the Amoeba Boys, blue-gray blobs in fedoras, hovered on the edge of the crowd.

"Girls, girls!" The mayor waddled forward, eyes merry above his great white mustache, with the key to the city shining in his hand. 

Miss Bellum bent down and said in his ear, "Blossom."

"Huh? -- Oh, yes! Blossom!"

"Yes, Mr. Mayor?"

"I understand that some unfortunate misguided individuals have been, shall we say, holding grudges against you..." He caught sight of the Amoeba Boys and jabbed a finger at them. "Ah! It was you, wasn't it?"

Miss Bellum bent down again. "No, Mayor! You didn't want to talk to her on the hotline earlier, remember?"

The Mayor scratched his head. "Really? I didn't want to talk to Blossom? Whatever for? Well anyway..." He thrust out the key. "Please accept this token of Townsville's appreciation for everything you've done in your young but unselfish life, and in the hopes that you'll always brighten our city with your sweet presence!" An impressive speech; he sounded as if back on the campaign trail. 

The crowd cheered. Blossom's face shone, and her heart glowed warm.

The Amoeba Boys came forward. 

"What are you doing here?" Buttercup folded her arms.

Bossman said in his best Edward G. Robinson voice: "We've pulled off The Crime Of All Time, that's what!"

"Yeah!" The other two nodded happily.

"Not just the crime of the century, mind you, or even of the year, but The Crime Of All Time!"

"Yeah, yeah!"

"And when you hear about it, you'll _have_ to arrest us!" Bossman fairly jiggled with excitement.

"So what is it, boys?" the Professor wanted to know. 

Bossman held up a piece of paper. "See this? We got a parking ticket!" He laughed triumphantly. 

Blossom scratched her head. "But you guys don't have a car. How could you get a parking ticket?"

Miss Bellum plucked it away from Bossman and studied it. "Why, this isn't yours! It's got someone else's name on it!" She looked closer. "And it's already been paid off!"

Bossman's eyes went blank; he appeared to be thinking hard. Then Tiny spoke up.

"Boss, would that explain why we found it in a trash can?"

Everyone burst out laughing. But no one laughed louder or more cheerfully than Blossom, trading hugs with the Professor and her sisters. 

Miss Bellum's cell phone rang. She answered it. "Hello?...oh, yes...thank you." She returned it to her side.

"Girls, that was the Chief Of Police. They just caught up with Princess and Mojo."

~~~~

A week later, Mojo Jojo and Princess moped by the roadside, wearing orange coveralls and hard hats -- Mojo's was an orange dented version of his famous braincap -- glumly picking up trash and stuffing it in plastic bags. Armed guards stood nearby.

The two convicts heard a sound and looked up. The Powerpuff Girls hovered a few feet away, grinning at them.

Princess turned her back. "Hmmph!" Apparently even her daddy's army of attorneys couldn't get her released.

"Hey jailbird!" Buttercup sang.

"Who's the goody-goody now?" Bubbles bubbled.

Blossom raised a hand. "Now, girls, we musn't do that. We don't want to stoop to their level. Let's go."

They turned to fly away. But just before they shot off for home, Blossom couldn't resist yelling "Jailbirds!" over her shoulder, which brought a burst of giggles from her sisters and a mumbled "Curses!" from Mojo.


End file.
